Timing's everything in Allstate's 3-year sponsor package

Just as
corporate America was casting a frequently indifferent eye on the Olympics,
along comes Allstate Insurance Co. with a major financial
commitment to the U.S. Olympic team through 2004 and to the 2002 Salt
Lake City Winter Games.

By signing a three-year package as a U.S. sponsor — now available
well below its former price of about $20 million — in the automobile
and home insurance category, the Northbrook, Ill.-based company is in
just ahead of next year's Winter Games in Utah. But in this tepid economy,
few sponsors, global or domestic, have yet leveraged pre-Salt Lake Olympic
ties, and some never will if discretionary funds remain tight. Allstate
had the luxury of staying on the sidelines.

In fact, despite the multimillion-dollar cost to secure a category,
sponsors are scaling back Olympics-related promotion, advertising and
hospitality. Home Depot killed its hospitality plans and returned
all its Salt Lake hotel rooms. Xerox is reducing customer trips
to the Games.

Spokeswoman Emily Day declined to confirm whether Allstate will
weave hospitality into its Salt Lake plans.

Financial details of the Allstate deal were not available.

Allstate's announcement was accompanied by news that its Chicago-based
ad agency, Leo Burnett Co., has been instructed to roll out a
print advertising campaign, establishing a connection between Allstate
and legendary U.S. gold medalists Bonnie Blair, Brian Boitano,
Dan Jansen, Picabo Street and Kristi Yamaguchi.

Extracting value from an Olympics sponsorship "revolves around the
ability of companies to tap into the spirit of the Games before they
happen," University of Oregon professor Robert Madrigal said,
discussing Olympic sponsorship in general. Madrigal, a faculty member
with Oregon's Warsaw Sports Marketing Center, observed that "so few
companies do a good job of leveraging sponsorship, it is hard to say
why they do it, other than to keep competitors out."

The Allstate Olympic deal was shepherded by Robert Apatoff,
the insurer's first chief marketing officer. Apatoff previously was
a marketer with U.S. Olympic sponsor Anheuser-Busch Cos. and
with Reebok, a former Olympic sponsor.

HOUSE CALL: Newly elected International Olympic Committee
President Jacques Rogge is bound for North America. After dropping
in on the track and field world championships in Edmonton, Rogge is
making his maiden U.S. voyage Aug. 6-8, first to Salt Lake City, then
to U.S. Olympic Committee headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Clicking with Rogge is a priority for America's Olympics brass. Although
U.S. corporations and NBC are the major sources of IOC revenue,
American political influence within the global sports scene is marginal.
The four-year vice presidential term of Anita DeFrantz recently
concluded, making this one of the few times in the past half-century
the United States has had no member on the IOC's executive board.

A further source of concern is that smaller nations such as Australia,
Canada and Spain have the same number of IOC voting members (four) as
the United States. By comparison, Italy and Switzerland each has five
members.

"The United States does not have presence within the IOC proportional
to our participation," said USOC acting CEO Scott Blackmun, noting
U.S. teams are typically the largest at the Games and among the most
prolific medal winners. "It is incumbent on the USOC to become a more
active participant [internationally]. We have not made enough of an
effort."

Rogge has said the United States needs to host more world championships
in a broader range of Olympic sports, including those less lucrative
than, say, figure skating.